


Ignium

by Archaema



Category: Shadowrun, Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Character, Old Wounds, Questions of Morality, Ten Years Later, a bit of hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25444852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archaema/pseuds/Archaema
Summary: A weary mage weaves a magic circle, hidden away far from a long gone adopted home. Every segment of her past is compartmentalized, isolated in a grand scheme, and yet...The past is persistent, and sometimes finds us despite our best efforts to bury it.
Relationships: Glory/Female Protagonist (Shadowrun: Dragonfall)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Ignium

**Author's Note:**

> Elves live long lives.
> 
> As a setting, Shadowrun covers a long timeline. Apart from the purely self-indulgent appreciation for Glory, I started wondering just what one could weave into a single character's progression throughout the timeline. How many different incarnations could you experience as someone so long lived? And what happens when you make the break from one lifestyle, one part of the world, to a new one?
> 
> But also, with girls who love girls.
> 
> Lesbian content is always needed, and I was pretty happy to see the inclusion of Glory and Marta in the storyline.

Running a hand through her blond hair, the woman let out a breath she had held for long, silent moments. Shimmering with runes aligned to a broad circle of flickering violet luminescence, the stone floor beneath her provided a haunting glow. It made her figure an eerie presence in the dim vault.

Her work was done, hours upon hours sunk into the personal project that would define her latest in a long line of homes.

She turned, walking to the cold brick of the wall and leaned against it. She felt the chill seep through her black tank top, easing the prickling of sweat and raised hairs along her skin.

Rarely did most of the Awakened perform magical rituals on their own, yet her gamble had been successful.

She allowed herself a congratulatory wipe of her brow, before she reached over to the table beside her to pick up a soft, gray towel and dapple it across her exposed collar and face.

Like a strand of a spider’s web being plucked, she felt the faintest of vibrations in her senses. Long tendrils of magic, woven deeply all about the vault and into the building and land above, had already begun to prove their effectiveness.

She reached into her waistband and pulled the familiar weight of her revolver free, the heft a comfort in her palm.

Closer, that faint presence pushed.

It crossed the threshold of the building, through one of the broken garage doors.

Dust-laden concrete, the scarred floor of the warehouse, found new bootprints etched in the accumulation of years.

The door to the old offices, where she was just beginning to strip out the rotted wood and mold ridden drywall, opened and shut.

She stretched her fingers on her free hand, then clenched them so that her knuckles crackled softly. With a quick toss, she switched the pistol there.

Special guests deserved the best attention, after all. Her left hand went through a series of quick, arcane motions to warm them. There was a hint of soreness from the hours of work, but it was nothing she could not ignore. 

The ward at the top of the steps was more firm in its alarm, designed to warn her if anyone was so close to her sanctum. She closed her eyes a moment, settling her focus.

Closer still, to the very door to her vault. She could feel the shifts in the astral flow, the pull against magic.

A being with a frayed soul, perhaps half that of any normal sentient who had not been implanted with steel and chrome, was just outside.

Her green eyes narrowed, and she slid the pistol back into her waistband, thumb slipping its safety back in place. A sigh replaced her apprehension, and she let her eyes close as she leaned over the table, hanging her head.

The door opened slowly.

There was only silence, the woman who entered the room moving in calm, measured steps around her. As if there were some impenetrable perimeter around the tired mage, she seemed to not dare crossing the threshold.

“I did not expect I would see you again.” Her green eyes did not lift from the table, lost in the mass of the gray towel that lay where it had fallen from its rest around her shoulders.

“So it _is_ you.” 

Words of flawless German. If there had been any doubt, it was gone.

She lifted her hand, brushing her blond hair away from her long, tapered ear as she let out a snort of sardonic acceptance. 

“I can only assume I seem like the greatest charlatan you’ve ever known.” Her German in reply was a bit rusty, but it served its purpose.

“Maybe. I don’t know if I want to understand.”

That voice stirred memories that she had thought were destined to be consigned to buried parts of herself. Soft but unyielding, capable of steel and compassion in equal measure.

“Maybe it’s better if I don’t explain myself,” she said, a hint of weakness in her timbre that made it waver. Her hand lowered to the table again, bracing herself. The situation, the person standing before her, was the last thing she could have possibly anticipated in the whole of the world. “Am I to go the same way as him, then? I assume you did find him, if you’re here.”

She was equally unprepared for the feeling that greeted her in response to her question.

Cool metal rested against the top of her hand, the touch surprisingly gentle despite the rigidity and steel of Glory’s cybernetic limbs.

For a brief moment, a memory broke from the depths and flowed into her thoughts - An old hideout, friends deciding where to go next after facing odds that should have ended them all, played the backdrop to a brief touch of those cybernetic hands in a farewell laden with unspoken feelings.

“I don’t know if I want to understand,” she repeated. “But I need to before I can possibly know the answer to that, Archimedes.”

Her eyes lingered on the cool black of the claw-tipped hand touching her own, as if seeing the old details for the first time again.

At last, Archimedes lifted her gaze to meet the red eyes of her visitor, her old teammate, her old friend.

“It’s been almost a decade since Berlin, Glory,” she said. She did not move the slightest bit, afraid to dislodge the synthetic touch. “The others must have told you the part we played in the end of the Flux State.”

“You worked for a dragon,” Glory replied, voice dispassionate.

“We’d all already done that, as it happened,” came the quick reply.

“You made sure the old place was kept safe. I know that.” Glory frowned slightly, but her hand remained in place.

It pulled, and her other hand sought Archimedes’s. In tandem she pulled, until they were face to face squarely.

“You know I was never so naive as to think innocents wouldn’t die,” Archimedes said. “Even when we were on jobs together, I tried to avoid bloodshed where I could.”

“And yet here we are.”

“And yet here we are.”

Glory furrowed her brow, shaking her head lightly.

“You don’t look as tired, these days,” Archimedes said. 

There were a few extra wrinkles around Glory’s eyes, but there was a pervasive peace and strength that seemed to diminish the effects of the years that had interceded since they last saw one another. No longer did she seem haunted as she had once been, her skin even having lost a hint of its pale ghostliness.

“I let go of a lot of things.” Glory sighed. “You helped.”

“Did…” Archimedes paused, the corner of her lip turning down in a scant frown. “Did you ever talk to Marta?”

“Somehow, she’s alive. She’s doing ok.” _Without me,_ the accompanying old wound came across in Glory’s eyes.

Archimedes could not quite process how she felt about that. Indeed, processing much of the situation was not so simple. Life had always been complicated in their line of work, and the intervening years had not made it any less so. “And you dealt with Harrow?” 

“Harrow dealt with himself,” Glory said matter-of-factly. “He couldn’t give up chasing things beyond him.” She shook her head, long black hair swaying slightly with a few errant strands of gray.

“I’ve seen it happen more than once.”

“I believe you.” Glory frowned, looking up from behind the long hair that had fallen in front of her face. “But you? What happened to you. You’re not…”

“People change with time,” Archimedes said. “Everyone; even elves.”

Glory’s red eyes drifted down, leaving Archimedes’s to take her in slowly. She took in her slight shoulders and collarbone, the pale skin there faintly marred with old scars. She continued past her chest, framed in the damp black tank top.

There was a lingering moment spent taking in that sight before she bit her lip. She did her best to conceal the gesture, continuing onward.

Simple denim jeans covered Archimedes’s legs, hugging her hips more closely than Glory seemed to recall. Oftentimes, she had seen her in her armored long jacket, a practical piece of her wardrobe that had flowed around her. The plasteel plates woven into it had further concealed her figure. Once in a while, though, there had been moments where she’d caught the mage in her casual clothes.

Somehow, over the years, Archimedes had grown more lean. It was a surprising feat for the slight metahuman.

She still wore her jeans tucked into combat boots in her off time, though. Some habits never went away, it seemed.

“Even as things are now with my senses,” Glory started slowly, treating the words as if they were delicate things that could shatter the world with the slightest miscalculation, “I can tell your aura changed. Your magic isn’t the same.”

“I am not like he was,” Archimedes said instantly. “If you ever trusted me at all, then trust me on this. I am not like that.” She pulled back as much as she could without leaving Glory’s hands behind.

“Then what are you like, Archimedes?” Glory closed the distance, the mage’s back suddenly against the wall. “What am I supposed to believe of the woman who was my… friend - who helped Lofwyr end the Flux State that you helped protect so hard once Monika was gone?”

Archimedes gritted her teeth a moment, turning her head to look away. Glory’s searching gaze was piercing, laden with curiosity and a hint of fear.

It was fear that Archimedes recognized all too well. It was fear of what the truth would be about her old friend, who had fought and bled to bring closure to the demons of Glory’s own youth.

She let out a strangled breath, shaking her head.

“I don’t want to be your enemy, Glory.”

“Then you need to talk to me. Talk to me like I talked to you. Let me listen to you.” Glory lifted a hand, cool metal lightly taking the elf’s chin and guiding their gazes back together again. “Let’s work through this. I need to know who you really are.”

Silence grew, thickening the air in the vault as their eyes remained fixed on one another’s.

“Ok,” Archimedes said, her normally flowing voice frayed with raspiness.

“Ok,” Glory acknowledged, nodding once.

Archimedes squeezed the metal of Glory’s hand, carefully avoiding the metal razors that capped off her fingers while pooling her will. 

After another long pause, she spoke.

“I am a selfish person, Glory.” She licked her lips in time with a small shake of her head. “Most of the things I do, that I’ve done since I first turned up in Berlin years ago? Those things are in service of what I want.”

Glory faintly lifted her chin, but she did not interrupt. True to her word, she listened.

“Oh it doesn’t mean I’m incapable of altruistic moments, but I always figured that somehow later they’d be to my benefit. One way or another, someone may owe you down the line.”

Glory nodded once. “And when you helped me? Eiger? Dietrich? Even that oddball Blitz?”

“My team,” Archimedes said, a bit of wistful musing invading her words. “Sure, it served me, but neither was I unhappy to do the things I did for everyone.”

“You know there were things I wasn’t unhappy to do at the time that were pretty horrific.” The implication was clear in Glory’s words, matched by the dispassionate evenness in her voice.

“What I mean is that we can argue that helping our friends is selfish. Helping them helps us, doesn’t it? So it’s also to our benefit, even with the best of intentions.” Archimedes frowned slightly. “I’m just honest about it.”

“And what about… _her_? You could have killed her. You could have claimed rewards beyond most what most people can ever hope for. You could have been a legend.”

Archimedes smiled faintly.

“I…”

“You chose life more times than you’d admit, even if you made some choices for the nuyen, too. I get it. It’s what your job was as our lead, but…”

“Listen, Glory, the truth is I’m playing a long game. I save my money for a reason, sort of like you used to with the orihalcum. There are things that I want from this world.”

Archimedes lifted her free hand, tentative fingers touching the metal that made Glory’s arm. With a tremble in her fingertips, she followed it up to where the radial plates merged down to her collarbones and buried into her skin.

“Archimedes…” Glory spoke the name quietly, barely a whisper. “I want to believe you’re not a shit person. I want to think that you’re that person I knew in Berlin, the one who really was a friend and who showed compassion when she could, and was a storm of vengeful magic when it was right.”

“I can’t promise anything,” she said quietly, gently pressing her fingers against Glory with a bit more firmness. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get what I want.”

The mage set her jaw for a moment, voice lowering with a specter of anger rising in it. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get what belongs to me.”

“At any cost?”

Archimedes paused, and closed her eyes for a moment.

“Almost any cost.”

She reopened them, green meeting red again.

In Glory’s eyes, she could see the turmoil dissolve into resolve. She had gotten stronger since they’d last seen one another. The confidence there caught her by surprise.

“Let me do what you did for me, then,” Glory said. “Let me keep you on the right path.”

For the briefest moment, the mage’s teeth clenched. If she overstepped, it could hamper her whole life’s work, and yet…

“What is the right path?” Archimedes asked her, willing herself to bleed off some of her tension.

There was a glimmer in Glory’s eyes as she smiled up at the tall elf. It was unmistakably the look of someone who was not only correct, but knew they were, too. 

“The one with me.”

Glory moved her hand, the slightly warmed metal finding the back of her neck and pulling them together. There was a scant moment when they could feel each other’s breath, quickened at the spontaneous contact, before their lips met.

Archimedes’s eyes were wide for but a moment before her shoulders sagged and she leaned forward, her slight frame sinking into the kiss. Her heart thrummed with quickened beats, the feeling given life in her breast one she had consigned to an impossible thing to ever occur again in her life.

The way the kiss shifted from a longing test of lips to something deeper and warmer, making it clear that it had surprised even Glory.

Archimedes felt Glory’s other hand on her hip, and returned the gesture with her arms sliding down around her waist, holding her close in a strong embrace tinged with desperation. To let go meant it would end, though she wasn’t sure if she was more scared it would be the kiss or the potential road that had seemingly just opened up before them.

When their lips did part, the comforting slick warmth of each other’s tongues receding as well, there was a shared moment of effort spent recovering their breath. Archimedes bit her lower lip abashedly, and gave a short, disbelieving laugh.

“Ok. I guess we have a lot to talk about,” she said, dazed satisfaction flowing through her words.

“Yes,” Glory agreed with a nod. “We do.”

“This is going to take a long time to explain,” Archimedes said, caution creeping into her voice.

“Time is something I have, right now.” Glory gave a content smile, one Archimedes had not seen for a long time.

“I know a good cafe not far from here, it’s still in Tacoma. It reminds me of Cafe Cezve.”

“That sounds good.” Glory slid her hand forward, around Archimedes’s waist. “Let’s go.”

Archimedes nodded, and returned the gesture as they started toward the door together.

“So,” Archimedes began, “you’re probably wondering about my aura…” 

**Author's Note:**

> Certainly there's a lot more I could write in here, more explicit detail for long term characterization, but this is something of a whim that I decided to put down in text this go around.
> 
> Perhaps if there's ever serious interest, or a bug bites and I feel the need to do more (maybe after I finish the 5e campaign I'm running right now and its story is finished), I'll add onto this.
> 
> As always, you can find me on twitter at @archaema (writing both sfw and nsfw catalogued at @shadysuccubus as well).
> 
> Please feel free to provide feedback (or if you have *constructive* criticism, that's fine too).


End file.
